WINONA, Minn. — With amazement the Winona County recorder of deeds, Bob Bambeck, has seen a boom in prices for rural hunting land in his long career as county recorder. He noted in a Winona Post interview that some forested ridges now sell for more than the county’s best tillable acreage. The recent sale of Weber Springs near LaCrescent at $10 million is a case in point — roughly $9,100 an acre. Albeit the property has extensive improvements including a lavish lodge. In a separate Post interview, Chad Garteski of Weiss Realty in Durand, which specializes in hobby farms, country estates and hunting lands, said that Weber Springs was “a little bit of a unicorn” — unusually large at 1,100 acres and with amenities like the large family lodge, two guest houses, a horse stable, and a private fishing pond on a trout stream.
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Garteski to the Post: “In 2012 when I was first licensed to sell real estate, wooded ground in southeast Minnesota was selling about $2,000 an acre. Right now it’s closer to $6,000. In a period of 14 or 15 years, it’s tripled.” Back in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, he said, people were basically giving wooded land away so they didn’t have to pay taxes on it.